


you look so pretty when you're scared

by etherealangel



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Sorry, Implied Relationships, Iron Man 3, M/M, Parallels, Platonic Relationships, Universe Alteration, Winteriron if you squint, bucky falls instead of pepper, i guess, i wrote this when i shipped winteriron, winteriron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9367643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherealangel/pseuds/etherealangel
Summary: ‘Get to Bucky,’ he thinks despite his misfortune, and his feet stumble the second time he collapses onto a shipping container. The vibrations wrack his body and the metal clangs with his weight but he surges on, through the hot air that ebbs off the fire burning beneath him.Iron Man 3 alteration where, instead of Pepper, Bucky is the one stranded on the rig.[spoilers? maybe.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for a friend a while ago and it's sad. roll credits.

Sparks shower around him like a veil of fireworks: streaming through the crisp air, disturbed by the explosions wracking the vessel and swirling in a morbidly beautiful storm. Tony momentarily thinks of the beauty they hold as he tears down the platforms, feet pounding against the metal and the sound vibrating through the structure. He scrambles for a suit but it appears that the universe wants his doom to be quick, as it reminds him each time a suit is blown from the sky right before the metal curls around his body or whenever a piece of armour just fails to answer both his pleas and the magnetic pulses within his forearms.

‘Get to Bucky,’ he thinks despite his misfortune, and his feet stumble the second time he collapses onto a shipping container. The vibrations wrack his body and the metal clangs with his weight but he surges on, through the hot air that ebbs off the fire burning beneath him. _Them_ , his mind reminds as he lays first sight on the body sprawled over what remains of what could be assumed to be a room. Bucky’s arm is hooked around a canary yellow balustrade and the metal is struggling as much as he is to hold on, but it lacks one simple thing: the fear in his eyes. It burns as brightly as the chaos around them, and it very nearly stops Tony in his tracks as irises focus on his own approaching form.

“Tony –“

“Barnes, hold on,” Tony calls. He leaps onto the closest platform, which is just a little bit too far and a little bit too distant. He curses and his arms shake as he stands atop the balustrade, feet pressing awkwardly into the poles, but he steadies and uses the leverage to reach his arm out. Bucky is panicking. It’s an abrupt contrast from his typical stony expression, but he’s beginning to hyperventilate; his cheeks are flushed and he grapples at every item that threatens to be within a metal arm’s reach. Said items are systematically thrown into the fire burning beneath the brunet, accompanied with a frustrated cry each time it becomes more apparent that there was no easy way out.

Much to the Stark’s horrible realisation, he knows that Bucky, a man admired for his indifference and bravery in the face of terror, is absolutely _petrified_.

“I’ve got you, Bucky. Take a breath. Bucky -,” he exhales, pushes himself up a bit more and tries to reach up even more. He can’t quite get to him. It’s just a few inches but it feels like a mile, as if Tony is nothing but a seagull attempting to extend a single feather over the entire of the Pacific. “James Barnes, look at me!”

And then he does.

It’s as if the entire world stops for the soldier. His eyes focus on Tony, wide and shining with a wetness that the Stark recognises from too many nights of waking to the sound of his own shuddering breaths, and his heaving chest suddenly stops. Everything but the quiver in Bucky’s jaw stills, his hair whips around his face, and in that moment, he becomes a tragedy. He becomes something beautiful, something yet to plummet into the abyss that was pain and suffering and something caught in the beauty of a thousand burning, orange sparks of fire. The sparks manage to pause the second for just a little bit longer, Tony realises: just long enough for him to see flaming red reflected in grey irises. The moment is shattered with a gentle murmur of “Breathe,” from Tony, which entices a gasp from the soldier like a man filling his lungs after having a hand locked around his throat.

Despite his inevitable reality yet to be forced upon them by the workings of the universes, that he was yet to fall and when he fell, there was no standing up and walking off, Bucky speaks, and his voice is small. It lurches in Tony’s chest, coils around the arc reactor that still struggles to prevent shrapnel from pressing into his heart and sending him down into his own Mariana's trench, and knocks air from his lungs.

“Don’t let me fall again. Please, Tony – _please._ ”

“You’re not going to fall,” Tony announces, as if he has any part in making that decision. He rasps in a breath and leans forward, but he has to recline when his balance dangerously teeters and he locks his fingers down and around the railing he stood on. The structure jolts downward and Bucky cries out again, further anchors his right arm around the metal only seconds away from collapsing. “But I can’t reach any further and you can’t stay there. You’ve gotta let go.” Tony shifts his grip and manages to reach forward just a bit more. His fingers are _so_ close, just short of curling around the prosthesis just as desperately reaching out towards him.

“You’ve gotta let go. I’ve got you. I’m gonna catch you.” He tries again, furrows his brows and feels the sweat running down the skin of his spine. For a second, Tony isn’t sure of what he was seeing, but the moment passes slowly, and that confirms that his eyes aren’t conjuring images that aren’t really there.

At the words, Bucky’s face melts into one of calm, deep-felt serenity, and his lips curl up in the faintest of smiles. The crane jolts again but he doesn’t cry out, this time: he just gasps in a shivering breath and keeps his eyes on Tony, chapped lips mouthing out words that were too soft to be heard over the roaring blood in the Stark’s ears and the crashes of explosions around them.

_Thank you._

The rig gives way.

Just before Tony can throw himself forward and lock his dirty fingers around Bucky’s extended wrist, a crash explodes its sound from above them and sends the fragile platform lurching. The burnet’s grip, slicked by sweat and unstable at its very best, also betrays him, and he’s thrown from the platform. He barely manages to touch Tony’s fingers, the softest brush of skin against metal, as gravity pulls him down towards the fire beneath them, and as he falls, his scream bounces off the collapsing metal. Tony’s accompanies it, and he wishes, prays, that the slow motion he’s seeing it in is real, and he can still extend his hand down and pull his friend up, but he’s gone, as if he wasn’t there to begin with. Tony can only stare after him, feel the heat pulsing onto his hot cheeks and shakily breathe in the oxygen working through his lungs.

For the second time, James Barnes falls, and instead of ice, his abyss is one of fire.


End file.
